Four-Play earns four stars
Physical therapy students’ wheelchair rugby fundraising event deemed a success
By Jackie Zimmermann, Staff Writer
March 7, 2008 | 8 p.m.
“Hey, what is this?” joked Ohio Buckeye Blitz Captain Brett Harbage when the first women’s rugby player on the opposing team called for a sub. “This isn’t hockey!”
Even those skilled in the game of rugby were out of their element when they went up against Harbage and the rest of the Ohio Buckeye Blitz, Ohio’s only wheelchair rugby team, during Four-Play, a pay-to-play fundraiser presented by the School of Physical Therapy class of 2008 Saturday, March 1.
The event consisted of teams made up of four to six students, faculty and staff of varying skill levels who paid $75 to compete against the Blitz for 30 minutes. Despite playing almost nonstop from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., the energy of the Blitz was inexhaustible compared to that of the opposing teams, which was faltering after a half-hour.
“It was exhausting,” said Jared Braden, a first-year student in the School of Physical Therapy. “My arms are just hanging.”
“You don’t think a half-hour time spot is that long, but after five minutes you are totally gassed,” said tournament Co-Director Brooke Vaughan. “We’re not used to propelling ourselves with our upper bodies. You want to play the whole time, but you are so dead by the end.”
Although their interest in wheelchair rugby was sparked after Petra Williams, assistant professor in the School of Physical Therapy, played clips of the documentary “Murderball” in her cultural competency class, Vaughan and fellow tournament Director David Kohlrieser were inspired to organize the event after Blitz player Jeremy Edgar came to their class in order to help students learn about spinal injuries.
“We thought we were just working with a spinal cord injury patient,” Kohlrieser said. “But he was like, ‘I used to play college football. I’m 270 pounds. I lift all the time. Do you want to come up and play with our quad-rugby team?’ We said yes right away.”
Harbage started the Blitz about four years ago after the older guys he used to play with began to retire. However, as an amateur-athlete team, the members of the Blitz have to pay for all equipment and travel expenses on their own, and that can get pretty pricey.
After spending time with the players, Vaughan, Kohlrieser and the rest of their group returned from Columbus with both sore arms and a strong desire to help the team raise money. The physical therapy students decided on the tournament as a fun way to break from traditional fundraising activities on campus.
“Most of the fundraisers down here are 5Ks,” Kohlrieser said. “This is something so much different than that.”
After thoroughly promoting their fundraising event, the physical therapy students managed to get 30 teams from the university and the community, with names like “Hell on Four Wheels” and “Hot Wheels,” to compete against the Blitz. While all the money earned went to the semi-professional team, Vaughan and Kohlrieser hoped that the event would also gain attention and support from the student body.
“The initial reason was to make money for the team, but now it has grown into this awareness project for the university,” Vaughan said. Having students attend the event will help show them that these are just regular, cool guys, she said.
The excitement generated by the event did exactly that, and Kohlrieser was pleased with the “constant flow” of supporters that arrived on game day.
“The turnout was incredible,” Kohlrieser said. “It was great to see so many different clubs and people from the university and community playing and cheering their teams on.”
While this was the first time the physical therapy school put on the tournament, its success has led to aspirations of making it an annual event.
“The physical therapy students were all really excited to play, but only about six signed up,” Vaughan said. “Now they know what it is like and many first- and second-year students have already stepped up to help plan future tournaments.”
And the Ohio Buckeye Blitz is more than willing to return to OU.
“We’ll be back every year if they’ll have us,” Harbage said. “It was awesome. They did a good job putting it together.”
For Williams, getting students to interact with the players as often as possible will help dissolve the uncomfortable feeling many people have when talking to someone with a disability.
“We talk about acceptability or diversity, but it kind of seems like watching other people instead of getting to know them and connecting,” Williams said. As a sporting event, this is common ground for people to talk to the players and relate to them. They can see that they are in a chair and accept it, because it is simply part of who they are, she continued.
Kohlrieser agreed that the event will help show students how people with a disability can still lead a normal life.
“You think a spinal cord injury is so limiting,” Kohlrieser said. “But all these guys are young, and now they can still be aggressive and competitive.”
For Williams, the students’ dedication and excitement about organizing the event had a deep, personal meaning as well.
“It’s something I had always hoped for,” Williams said. “I view my job as showing what different things are out there and hoping that someone would be inspired by that and it will become their thing.”
The students in the physical therapy class of 2008 really did make the event their very own.
“I was just here to make sure there were no barriers in the way,” Williams said. “They drove the whole thing.”
“Four-Play” managed to earn $3,200 for the Blitz, which will go toward purchasing a new chair for the team.
“The tournament did exactly what we wanted it to,” Kohlrieser said. “It brought so many different people in to play a relatively unknown sport while raising money for a great group of guys.”
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